It is probably safe to say that Rodney Gilfry is one of the most
versatile baritones working today. Not only does he perform parts
within the usual realm of his voice category, he also keeps operetta,
cabaret
and a weekly radio program in his grasp. And if that wasn't
enough,
he has created noteworthy new roles such as Stanley Kowalski and Tsar
Nicholas
II. Naturally, he has a website - www.gilfry.com - where details
about his career and a large photo gallery can be found.

It was during the time of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt
Lake
City that Rodney Gilfry returned to Chicago for performances with Lyric
Opera. He had made his debut in Capriccio several years
earlier,
and it was good to have him back again in the Windy City. We met
in between his performances and had a wide-ranging discussion about his
life and interests. Here is much of what was said that afternoon
. . . . .

Bruce Duffie: You’re a lyric baritone?

Rodney Gilfry: That’s what they say. I’m just
a baritone, basically. Most of what I’ve done is lyric baritone
repertoire
but that’s changing.

BD: Changing how?

RG: I’m going to do Eugene Onegin for the
first
time this summer, and I’m doing some things that are not typically
associated
with a lyric baritone. I’ll do my first big Verdi part in San
Diego
in 2004.

BD: Do you like the direction that your voice is
taking
you?

RG: Yeah. And that’s what it is. My
voice
is taking me there. I want to be sure that it’s going about by
that
process, and not that I’m pushing my voice into something that it’s not
appropriate for.

BD: Is this how you decide if you’ll accept or
reject
a new role?

RG: Absolutely. As every singer should, I’ve
made
an effort to sing in my own voice as much as possible. That means
to know how I should sing in my voice that sounds the most beautiful,
but
is really easy. That is the big secret. If you have to do
something
that takes force to sing, then it may not be right for you. But
in
my investigations into my own voice, it has shown me where it is most
comfortable,
and that is in a little bit heavier repertoire than Rossini and
Mozart.
Not that I’ll give those up, but I’m very happily moving into Verdi and
some of the Russian repertoire.

BD: Your voice selects the roles. Do you like
the characters that these parts impose on you?

RG: So far. It’s a real broad palette of
different
characters, which is a lot of fun. I don’t know of any roles that
I would refuse to play because of the characters. I don’t mind
playing
bad guys, or good guys, or innocent guys, or really corrupt guys.

BD: Baritones generally either kill or get killed.

RG: That’s usually the case.

BD: You wouldn’t rather get the girl?

RG: I don’t care if I’m not the romantic interest on
stage although that happens in many operas, you know. Don
Giovanni
does get killed, but he is the central character of that opera.

BD: He’s had women; but I don’t think he gets any
new
ones once we see him.

RG: No. We see him in the process of his downfall and it’s
interesting. From the time the curtain goes up till it goes down,
he’s unsuccessful at getting any more. It’s the end of the line.

BD: Tell me the secret of singing Mozart.

RG: Oh boy! Mozart’s tough. Mozart is
probably
the most demanding thing that I’ve done so far because it’s so
exposed.
To do it well requires a really good musician and a real master of
technique.
You’ve got this beautiful kind of pristine, crystalline, classical
sonority
the way that the orchestra and the voice work together. It’s all
there. It’s laid out bare bones. There’s nothing to hide
behind.
It takes a great deal of skill, but by that token it’s also very
rewarding
to do Mozart, if you can do it well.

BD: Do you do it well?

RG: Never as well as I’d like to.

BD: You’re always striving to get a little better?

RG: Well sure. I think everyone should and I
think
most of us do.

BD: Is there such a thing as a perfect performance?

RG: Interesting question. I don’t think
so.
There’s probably no such thing as a perfect anything. I did have
an experience where I was working with a soprano who had just come from
singing at the Metropolitan Opera. I said, “What have you been up
to?” and she said “I just came from singing five perfect Donna Annas at
the Met.” I went “Wow! That’s amazing! Even if I
thought
I had been really good, I don’t think I would say I was perfect,” and
she
said, “Every single night, every note, everything I did, came out
exactly
like I intended it to, and it was really unusual.” She said that
because it WAS unusual. I don’t think I’ve ever come off the
stage
and said, “That was a perfect performance.” As much as we prepare
with all of our voice lessons, all of the preparation that goes into
each
role, and the years of experience we’ve had, every time we walk onto
the
stage it’s still a crap shoot to some extent.

BD: I just wonder about those “perfect performances”
if her colleagues or the audiences would also say that they were
perfect
performances.

RG: I’m sure people would find fault in every
performance.
For her they were perfect. I guess I am striving for that
although
I know I’ll probably never attain it. Maybe for one performance
of
something, I’ll say, “That was exactly as I intended it to be.”

BD: Right now we’re right in the middle of the
Olympic
games. Is an operatic performance like an Olympic
competition?
Are you striving to get that gold medal? And how do you feel if
the
audience is marking off every little mistake?

RG: That’s a really good question. I don’t
think
we should have that attitude, but sometimes, you know, as they say in
Italian,
“In bocca a lupo” - into the mouth of the wolf. I’ve always
taken that to mean the wolf is the audience, so that tells you a little
bit about my mind set! I am aware that the audience is there, but
when I’m performing my best I’m not thinking about that. I’m
really
thinking about being a team player and I’m very aware of everything
that’s
going on around me and very unabsorbed in my own performance.
That’s
when I do my best. It seems contrary, but that’s really when I do
my best.

BD: You get wrapped up in the character?

RG: In the character, in the moment, in the dramatic
situation, in the music at the moment, but not about what I look like,
not about what I am doing with my voice. I’m just a participant
in
this wonderful creation, and if you allow yourself to be like that,
wonderful
things can happen. It's like a doubles match in tennis – you get
served a ball that’s a little over to the left and you lob it back, and
the
other person hits it back in their own way, and your partner picks it
up
from another corner of the court. In that way it becomes
dynamic.
Every evening is different, and it has a very liberating effect on the
whole performance. Everyone relaxes, and says “OK, we don’t have
to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be exactly like we did it last
time.”
You don’t think about last time, you don’t think about next time, you
don’t
think about what’s going to happen in three bars. That’s when the best
performances are achieved.

BD: Do you actually try to become the character,
rather
than just portray the character?

RG: Oh well, yes, of course. It’s complicated,
though, because there are so many different things going on. This
is the difference between singing a concert and singing in an
opera.
In a concert, you can pretty much concentrate on the music, and you’re
not even expected to move around very much. You’re not expected
to
do much of a portrayal of a character, particularly if it’s an art
song.
Opera’s different. You’re expected to have the same vocal
mastery,
the same vocal ease as you would in a concert or a recital, but you’ve
got a lot more to think about. The conductor is twenty or thirty
feet away, you’ve got all the business on stage, you’re moving around,
playing with props, reacting with other characters, you’ve got your
costumes
and the lights and the makeup. You’d be surprised how distracting it is
to wear a hat and a beard! It totally changes your perception of
your singing. So if all those things can be taken in stride and
be
taken into the whole kind of gestalt, then it’s a great
experience.
But it’s a challenge!

BD: Is it possible to overanalyze any of these
characters?

RG: Oh sure it is, and I’m sure I do that a lot
because
I tend to be analytical about these things. Sometimes the most
important
thing is just to sing beautifully. I remember when I first did The
Queen of Spades, I sang Yeletzky’s aria for the conductor and he
said,
“No, no, no. Be like a cello. We don’t want to hear the
words.
Just sing beautiful melody.” He demonstrated to me without any
consonants.
I thought “He doesn’t really mean that,” so I did it with no
consonants,
and he pointed at me and said, “That’s right! This is a musical
moment.”
So it definitely is possible to think too much about the music, to
think
too much about the diction, to think too much about the
character.
There are times, as in La Bohème which I’m doing now
at the Lyric, where the music is the most important thing. The
melody,
the beauty of tone that expresses what’s trying to be expressed better
than any characterization, any kind of perfect diction, any kind of
complicated
thought process; just that beautiful melody sometimes is what does it
the
best.

BD: Have we thrown in another joker now because
you’re
performing Italian or Russian in an English-speaking country with the
supertitles
above, so the audience can read the text?

RG: There are two sides to that coin. I think
supertitles are the greatest boon to opera in America. I think
they’re
absolutely wonderful on the whole and in general. You can say to
people “Go to the opera,” even if they’ve never been to an opera
before,
and when they say “Yeah, but isn’t it, like, in Italian?” you can say,
“You can understand every word! There are supertitles projected
above
the stage. You can see everything that’s going on in real time,
all
in English. You’re completely in the know of what’s going
on.”
The negative side, of course, is that they distract you from looking at
the stage, especially if you’re up close you’ve got to really crane
your
neck to look straight up to see the supertitles. The other thing
is the timing. You may have a great line or a great joke that has
a punch line. In a recitative in particular, you can decide the
timing,
and if someone pushes the button too soon or too late it messes it up.

BD: Comic singers often tell me that they get two
laughs:
one when the audience reads it, and one when they see it a moment later
on the stage. Do you like playing for the audience?

RG: I really enjoy playing for the audience if it’s
a comic thing. I enjoy being on stage. I enjoy
acting.
I enjoy presenting something beautiful and of real integrity to an
audience,
but I can get carried away. I can go the wrong direction.

BD: Well, of course, that was my next
question:
How far is too far?

RG: That’s a real fine line. Making a joke,
like
pointing out a line in the supertitles for effect, is acceptable.
But there’s definitely a limit; and it’s just a matter of taste.
It’s completely subjective and you just have to feel what’s right and
what’s
not.

BD: Do you get this perhaps in La Bohème in
the fourth act where you’re screwing around for awhile and then all of
a sudden the girls come in and everything has to be serious?

RG: No, not that. Not that at all. That’s
composed
in such a way that there’s an abrupt change of mood and that’s in fact
what makes it so effective. We’re just joking around, basically
having
this big free-for-all, and BOOM! Musetta walks in the door
followed
by Mimi and it turns deadly serious, which makes that much more
contrast
between the two moods. There are times on stage where it would
just
be inappropriate to break the illusion of the separation from the
audience,
and do something directly to the audience. In a serious piece,
where
the aria ends and the performer stands there and takes a bow, I’m so
offended
by that!

BD: I thought we’d gotten mostly away from that.

RG: Mostly we have, but it does happen
occasionally.
Maybe if it’s not a bow, the singer will stand there with their arms
outstretched,
and it’s just too obvious that they’re trying to garner applause.

BD: Do you think about that in rehearsals, so when
your
aria ends you know what position you’re going to be in so that it’s not
looking badly if there is a long pause?

RG: Yes. You have to consider those
things.
You know the audience is there. You’re not performing it into
empty
space. You are presenting it to a public, and that’s part of the
whole art of it all – to do it in a way that they feel included but you
don’t want to look like you’re grandstanding. I remember a
wonderful
story that a friend of mine told me. He went to a play many years
ago on Broadway, and there was a very dramatic scene where the actor
collapses
and he’s crawling across the stage trying to get to his nitroglycerin
pills.
They’re twenty feet away, and he’s having a heart attack. There
was
a girl sitting in front of my friend who had never been to the theater
before, and she turned to her date and said, “He doesn’t even know that
we’re here!” and I thought that was a beautiful comment. Of
course he know they were there, but the actor made it so effective, so
real, that it was not presentational. It seemed like everyone
was witnessing this actual occurrence and it wasn’t being
demonstrated.
He wasn’t saying, “Now I’m dying!”

BD: We have to eavesdrop on you, almost.

RG: That’s it. That’s right.

BD: Which brings me to another one of my balance
questions.
In opera, how much is art and how much is entertainment?

RG: Oh, gee, I don’t know how to define either of
them,
so it’s a kind of impossible question. I think we have the
responsibility
to entertain on some level, but “entertain” does not mean to make
people
laugh. “Entertain” means give people a meaningful experience, to
give the public something that they can’t get anywhere else.
Leave
them enriched when they walk out of the theater and in the process,
there’s
art involved.

* *
*
* * *

BD: You mentioned concerts. How do you divide
your career between staged opera and concerts?

RG: Well, concerts are kind of a tricky thing,
because
they’re usually booked so much later than operas are. Basically
what
I do is try to keep some time free in between engagements, and then at
a later date fill it out with concert dates. I’ve also
taken
to doing a cabaret show, which now qualifies as one of my concert dates
in my calendar. I’ve also done some musicals recently. I
did
musicals for years, but since I became a professional classical singer,
I haven’t done that many musicals. I did a couple in Los Angeles
during the last year.

BD: Do you find those satisfying?

RG: Oh, I love the musicals. Sometimes I think
that’s what I’m best at, where I should be.

BD: Really? Why?

RG: I like to entertain. I think I can do more
than stand there and be an opera singer. It’s a hard thing to
describe.
I have a lot of fun doing musicals. I feel like there’s more
contact
with an audience. That’s also why I love doing my cabaret
show.
I actually talk to the audience for about a third of the time, just
talking
to them, telling stories and whatever. I just feel like a lot of
my talents that don’t get used in opera can be utilized in musical
theater.

BD: Is it difficult going from singing to speaking
and
back and forth?

RG: It’s tricky. It’s tricky, especially in
musical
theater. You can’t sing musical theater like you do opera.
It’s just wrong. If you get out there and sing with a big round
baritone
voice it’s just not right, it’s not the right style. It has to be
much more speech-pattern, and I think the moments where you use your
whole
operatic voice with all of its resonance have to be carefully chosen
because
it’s a sound that’s foreign to the musical theater stage for the most
part.
Not that people don’t appreciate beautiful voices, they certainly do. I
just did
Most Happy Fella in Los Angeles, singing the part of Joey,
and I really had to be careful. My voice is fairly dark,
especially
in contrast to musical theater sound, and when I just sing with my
natural
voice in musical theater, I have to be careful because it sounds so
different
from everyone else. I stick out, and that’s not right. It’s
not right to be such a huge contrast to everyone else that you don’t
fit
into the cast.

BD: You want to get back to being a team player
again?

RG: You want to be a team player, and it can be
misinterpreted
as showing off, because nobody else can do that on the stage. So
the operatic sound has to be used judiciously in musical theater.
The other side of it, though, is that you can use it since I think it’s
much closer to normal speech coordination of the whole vocal
apparatus.
It’s not as bad going from speech into singing and back into
speech.
In opera, for instance, in the Magic Flute, where you do a lot
of
speaking, or the Merry Widow, where you do a lot of speaking
and
then singing, it’s a little more of a challenge. It depends also
if you’re miked. If you’re miked you can really speak like I’m
speaking
now and everyone in the hall can hear you. If you’re not, then
you
need to project more, and then it will have a little more of an
operatic
sound because your voice needs to be properly positioned. You
have
to find that pocket where you can make quite a bit of sound without
straining
and still have inflection and sound like you’re not trying to talk
loudly!

BD: Do you prefer one over the other, or do you like
to balance the two?

RG: I like to balance. Obviously I’m an opera
singer first and foremost, at this point anyway, and I enjoy
that.
I love singing opera. I won’t give it up, but I really like to go
over to the other side and sing musical theater as well. I did a
lot of musical theater in high school so I wouldn’t consider myself
crossing
over. I’m not an opera singer crossing over into musical
theater.
I’m just coming back to something I did a lot in the past.

BD: Come over to the light side!

RG: Yeah! It is lighter. When I was
doing
Most
Happy Fella, it was concurrent with the rehearsals for the
Merry
Widow in Los Angeles and Merry Widow is almost like a
musical
anyway. But I was doing six hours of rehearsals for Merry
Widow
and then I’d go off and do the musical that night. I did that the
whole week - eight shows in a week and rehearsals every day!

BD: And you had enough voice left?

RG: Before I did it I thought I was probably going
to
die! But I’d been wanting to do this musical for such a long time
and this was the only way I could work it out. It was a piece of
cake! I just made sure that I got home by a certain time and got
some sleep. But it was not hard at all because musical theater
singing
is not as demanding as singing opera. We were miked for the
dialogues,
so it was a real pleasure.

* *
*
* *

BD: There’s one other facet of your career I want to
ask about - recordings. Do you enjoy making them?

RG: Yeah! I do enjoy making them. I
don’t
think I can say that I like any of my recordings, but I like the
process
of making them.

BD: Are you supposed to like them? It’s we
who are supposed to like them!

RG: That’s good, because I don’t! I’ve heard a
couple that I’ve been pretty happy with, but you hear everything on
those
recordings and there’s no escaping it. Once it’s down, it’s
down.
I do enjoy the process, though.

BD: Does it surprise you then, when someone comes up
and says, “Oh, this recording of yours is wonderful?”

RG: It does surprise me, but the recording industry
is in such bad shape right now, I think it will be a while before it
picks
back up. I’ve made about ten recordings, mostly operas, but some
other things too, and so, we’ll see how that turns out.

BD: One of them is Iphigénie en Tauride
of Gluck. Did you have to work very hard to learn that style?

RG: The style of Gluck! Not
really.
My voice teacher was Martial Singher. I worked with him in Santa
Barbara, and one of the first things he handed me was Gluck’s Orfeo.
I didn’t take it very seriously, but he was really enamored of it and
loved
the style, and I kind of got a feeling from him of his idea of the
style.
I did quite a bit of earlier music in concert before I was an opera
singer
- Bach and even back to Monteverdi - so I understand the sonorities and
harmonies and the declamation, which is so important in any language,
particularly
French. It can’t be emphasized enough. I felt very
comfortable
when I did that recording because I got it in my ear and it’ll never go
away. I hear what that’s supposed to sound like. I
also
studied French diction intensively. I never studied the language
per se, but I studied the diction intensively. It also helped
during
the recording sessions that we had a very good coach who would give
me little pointers in refining certain things. All those
things
together made me feel very comfortable with the style.

BD: We’re talking about old things, so let’s go to the
other
end of the spectrum. Do you also do new works?

RG: Yes I do. I’ve got two world premieres
coming
up. The first one is this December at the Royal Opera in
London.
I’m doing Sophie’s Choice, a new opera by Nicholas Maw.
If
you saw the film, I’m playing Nathan, the part that Kevin Kline
played.
Simon Rattle is conducting and Trevor Nunn is directing, and it should
be a big deal. All the things are in place to make a big thing
out
of it.

BD: Is it going to be compared to the movie?

RG: Undoubtedly. That’s inevitable. I
only
received the score last week, but it looks very good. I’m very
encouraged
by what I saw on the page, so we’ll see how that turns out. And
then
in the fall of 2003 I’m doing Nicholas and Alexandra at the Los
Angeles Opera, and that’s being composed by Deborah Drattell, who did Lilith
at the New York City Opera. I’ll be playing the part of Tsar
Nicholas
and Placido Domingo is doing Rasputin. That should be really fun.

BD: Is it especially interesting working with a
composer?

RG: Yes, it is, particularly in the case of Deborah
Drattell. It is going to be a real collaboration. I'm
looking
forward to that. When I did A Streetcar Named Desire in
San
Francisco, the score was basically finished by the time I saw it.
André Previn, who is a fantastic composer and a wonderful
colleague,
had more the attitude of "it’s done, there it is, if there’s a problem
I’ll change it, but if there’s no problem that’s it, it’s
finished."
So we didn’t make that many changes to Streetcar.

BD: Is it strange knowing that Drattell is writing
around
your talent?

RG: Oh, it’s great! It’s great! The part
of Nicholas was not initially intended to be a baritone. It was
supposed
to be a tenor; and when she decided to make it into a baritone she had
me in mind, which is really wonderful. We’ve had several
conversations
and she’s heard me sing but she wants to know if I can sustain a
certain
tessitura. She also wants to know how low I can comfortably
sing, so we’ve had discussions about that.

BD: It's good that the composer is considerate of
the
voice.

RG: Yeah! I know! I have to encourage her to
be
challenging enough because I don’t want her to be so nice that it’s all
easy to sing. You want to go to the extremes so you have some
range
of expression.

BD: You want to be challenged?

RG: Of course I want to be challenged! I’m a
thrill-seeker!

BD: Do you want the audience also to be challenged?

RG: Absolutely. Yes. I don’t want them
to
be so challenged that they walk out and say “That was a piece of junk,
I can’t whistle any of the tunes,” but you don’t want it to be so easy
that they say “So what’s new? We heard Verdi do this, or we heard
whoever do this, a hundred times. What’s new?” Of course
beautiful
writing for the voice will never get old because the voice has not
changed.
It’s an instrument that stays constant over the generations, and it’s
basically
a tonal instrument. Our minds work along tonal lines.
There’s
something appealing about beautiful music written for the voice.
If it gets too atonal or gets too percussive, I think maybe the
composer’s
using the wrong instrument. That’s what it feels like when you
have
to sing that stuff.

BD: You have done a few of those parts?

RG: Oh yeah! I’ve done enough of that. Really,
there are some parts that I have done where I just say to myself, “I
hope
this is worth the time that it’s taking me to learn this, because it
sure
is a hell of a lot of work.”

BD: And then you decline any future offers to sing that?

RG: Usually you don’t get other offers to sing it,
because
nobody puts them on.

BD: What about a role like Wozzeck?

RG: Well, that’s different. That’s a
masterpiece.
That’s getting towards the limits, though. I think that’s getting
towards the limits of what you can do with harmonies, with melodies,
with
tonality, and with voices. What I hear in Wozzeck is
music
composed so much for the characters that if they do what’s on the page,
it works.

* *
*
* *

BD: Do you leave enough time for you?

RG: I don’t feel any lack of time for me. I
don’t
feel like I’m overburdened. I don’t ever feel like I need a
vacation,
so I guess the answer is yes. We’ve got four days between
performances
here in Chicago and that’s CRAZY! What do I DO with
myself!
I’ve been learning Russian for Eugene Onegin, so that’s what I
do.
I use the time preparing for future things. But my main concern
is
not leaving enough time for me, but rather leaving enough time for my
family.
I’ve got three kids and they’re all teenagers! I’d like to spend a
little
more time with them! That’s one of my motivations for getting
into
acting and musicals and straight theater, to do some things like that
in
Los Angeles. I’m right close to the television and film center of the
world,
and there’s a hell of a lot of competition, but at least if I can do
some
of that I’ll be able to spend a little more time at home.

BD: Do your kids like being able to say, “My Dad’s
an
opera singer?”

RG: I don’t know. You’d have to ask
them.
I know they’re proud of what I do but it’s a two-edged sword.
They’re
proud of what I do, they’re proud of me, they’re proud to have a Dad
who’s
an artist, who travels and knows famous people, but on the other side,
they don’t get me half the time. So there are two sides.

BD: The goods are better, and the bads are poorer.

RG: Yeah. But I think in the end that it’s
been
great. The kids have had an unusual and rich life thus far,
because
we’ve lived in foreign countries. We did travel a lot, they speak
two languages, they really have a lot of culture that most of the kids
their age have no idea about, and it’s a big advantage for them.
But, you can’t have everything for nothing, so I just don’t get to be
home
that much.

BD: Thank you for being a singer.

RG: My pleasure.

= = = =
=
= = = =- - - - - - - -
-= = = =
=
= = = =

Bruce Duffie has contributed interviews to The Opera Journal
since 1985. He was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago for just
over
a quarter century, and now teaches Music History at Northwestern
University.
He also continues his radio work with a weekly program on WNUR-FM,
which
is also available on the internet. Next time in these pages, a
conversation
with tenor David Cangelosi.